Needs: Let's identify them and meet them for ourselves! :)

Hello lovely Positivity & Gratitude Community! I hope all of you are doing well Today I'm here to open a discussion about a person's needs or better, *your* needs, how you can identify them and how to meet them!

This article from Psychology Today about the What and the Why of Needs talks about how it’s not necessary to distinguish between desire, wants, and needs, rather we should look into how it’s a dynamic relationship between needs and strategies. So, to explain this in one sentence: strategies are what we want and needs are why we want it. An example mentioned in the article was how we strategize money to have various needs of ours met. Miki Kashtan talks along with their sisters came up with 4 broad categories that any need would most likely fall into. We have the basic one that includes food, shelter, fire, water and air under the Subsistence and Security, other than this, we have Freedom, Connection and Meaning. These are the ones we can easily put a need under. When we question why we want something at that particular time, and dig deeper, we will come closer to understanding indistinguishably what our needs are.

The first step to identifying your needs can be exploring the nature of your childhood. Growing up, children have a lot of needs and the primary givers of those needs are parents. But sometimes it’s not possible to meet every possible need of someone and thus we learn to adapt to how our needs were met while growing up. For example, growing up let’s say you didn’t get a lot of attention and love from your parents and you had to fight to get it from them, it’s likely that when you grow up, you are going to attract relationships where you are continuously trying to win over the attention and love from your partners/friends because without it you don’t have that need of yours met that connects you to people. The main reason we need our needs to be met is that it hurts when they don’t. In the starting of relationships, we may convince ourselves we are okay with our needs not being met (and sometimes we may not even know what our needs are, to begin with!) because we love the other person but long-term, this creates resentment within us regarding the bond we share with the other person. Our mind has “needs” both mental and emotional which means it absolutely needs to feel a certain way or at most, feel secure. As humans, we may share these 4 feelings that are needed: 1. Seen, 2. Heard, 3. Wanted, and 4. Safe.

The thing is, though, we are the only person responsible to meet our own needs, emotional or mental.

• Begin by acknowledging that you have needs. When our needs aren’t met, we may be whiny, complaining, overreacting, snapping at people and whatnot, if that’s how you feel, first separate yourself as the subject and try to simply see yourself as someone with needs.

• Be honest with yourself. Where do these needs arise from? Is it possible for you to dig a bit into your past and see how connections with other people follow a pattern? Can you really try to accept that it’s still your responsibility to meet those needs despite how you were treated in the past?

• Accept that you have needs that make you look a certain way in relationships and how it’s your responsibility alone to meet your own needs.

• Explore how you can provide yourself with the security and reassurance you need in relationships to yourself without asking someone else for it. If you’d like, consider checking out this post to create a good relationship with yourself: https://www.7cups.com/forum/PositivityGratitude_170/SelfExplorationSelfLove_178/Lovingyourselfisthegreatestrevolutionajourneytowardsabetterselfrelationship_255082/ and also this post about showing love to yourself by the Five Love Languages: https://www.7cups.com/forum/PositivityGratitude_170/SelfExplorationSelfLove_178/Loveyourselfthewayyouwantotherstoloveyou_251055/.

Question. How aware do you think you are regarding your needs and how can you work on meeting those needs for yourself?

Tagging some people who might like this post: @HopieRemi @Sunisshiningandsoareyou @LovetoGod @theriverissinging

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Sources:
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/acquired-spontaneity/201301/the-what-and-the-why-in-human-needs 2. https://coachsimona.com/blog/how-to-meet-your-needs/ 3. https://psychcentral.com/lib/meeting-your-needs-is-the-key-to-happiness#4 4. https://mariashriver.com/how-to-begin-meeting-your-own-emotional-needs/ 5. https://medium.com/honestly-yours/you-have-to-meet-your-own-needs-565654b6acd5